


no absolution

by CaughtAGhost



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 8.08 Alternate Ending, Alternate Ending, Carl Grimes Dies, Episode: s08e08 How It's Gotta Be, Episode: s08e09 Honor, Gen, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13872933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaughtAGhost/pseuds/CaughtAGhost
Summary: 8.08: What if Negan did take Carl to be executed?(And what a look into Negan's thought process following Carl's speech from the walls.)





	no absolution

**Author's Note:**

> Not a fix-it, not a happy ending.
> 
> Carl is still bit, Carl still dies.
> 
> Probably won't make you feel any better.
> 
> No Negan/Carl

“Was it supposed to be this way? Is this who you wanted to be?” Carl says and his voice breaks, staring down from the top of the Alexandrian walls. Real far off, Negan thinks he can hear crickets.

Negan stares. He feels nothing, he feels nothing, he feels nothing (he feels something) he’s been silence too fucking long, he should say something, do something, kill someone--

_This isn’t who I wanted to be._

And he could laugh, he could fucking laugh because sometimes this kid-- this fucking kid-- sees through Negan like glass. Negan, killer of men and the dead alike. Negan, a motherfucking titan. A sadist. A hero. A god. A monster. Yet Carl treats him like he’s human and it catches Negan somewhere between mortally offended, and choking on what he’s become.

Negan stares, and Carl stares back, shoulders slumped, resignation in his eyes. It should be pathetic. It should be laughable. Negan doesn’t give a damn; that’s his brand, he’ll burn it all down, and yet.

He feels it. He feels the weight of Carl’s words, a condemnation and a chance to change all wrapped in one (and Negan has too much pride to ever change, but he almost regrets it). For a moment, Negan feels really bad for him. He locks eyes with Carl, searching. Is he serious? Is he angling? He looks and he looks and he can’t quite tell what it is he’s seeing. He feels bad. Not bad enough.

“Okay. Alright, I can make do with that,” Negan says.

Carl looks surprised.

Negan doesn’t look behind him, at his men. He doesn’t need to look to them for approval. They’re sadists, anyways, the lot of them. Deranged, twisted by circumstance, and maybe some of them who have had it in them for a long time before the new world gave them an outlet. They won’t pity a child. They hunger for flesh and blood. They’re as bad as the dead, but they’re alive.

“I have to come down. Hold on,” Carl says. He doesn’t ask for time to say goodbye. Negan is goddamn impressed. He’s curious how long the kid’s resolve will hold until he gets scared.

His head and hat disappear below the fence as he climbs down the ladder on the other side, and a few moments pass before he appears, walking around the corner on the outside. Negan meets him halfway, and then they’re face to face. “You look like hell,” Negan says.

Carl shrugs. Negan isn’t making a scene. Carl might have made a dumb fucking move, but the poignance of his speech isn’t lost on Negan and it feels distasteful to make jokes now. He claps Carl on the shoulder, looks him square in the eye. “Hey. Hey, chin up, squirt,” he says, quiet. “You’re a hero.”

“I’m just doing what I have to do.”

“Ah, that’s the spirit. Look a little sadder, would you? Jeez,” Negan says. He pushes Lucille into Carl’s hands. “Hold this a sec, arms up, over your head, there you go.” He starts patting him down. He can feel skinny ribs through his shirt, pointed hip bones. “Does Rick fuckin’ feed you? Christ almighty,” he grumbles.

“What are you doing?”

Negan finishes and takes Lucille back. “Just checking.” It’s a formality. Negan wishes Carl wouldn’t look so beaten down. What he loves about the kid is his spirit. His anger, raw and fearless. This is a kid who would coming snapping at the throat of any beast. The kid who Negan would have needed to look out for, gladly, giddy with the sheer strength of his will, his principle. The Carl who snuck into the compound in the back of a fucking supply truck and ran in guns blazing with no back up.

This Carl has sunken eyes, and no bite left.

Negan wants to fix him. He could turn him into something great.

He pauses. He clicks his teeth, thinking. He could turn him into something great.

_Is this who you wanted to be?_

“Alright, let’s roll out,” he says, dragging Carl by the arm. Carl stumbles along, trying to carry his own weight but not quite fast enough. He puts the kid in the front seat of his truck.

“I don’t understand. Where are we going?” Carl asks. Negan gets into the driver’s side and turns over the engine. The headlights come on, illuminating the mass of his men, surrounding the walls. They’ll stay here. Keep an eye on things. This is a whole new development, strategically speaking. Negan is almost reeling with the possibilities, for the unshakeable weight in his chest, is this who you wanted to be?

“We’re going for a little drive,” he replies, throwing the vehicle into gear and peeling out. Out on the road, stars peek out behind the trees. The sky is an infinite stretch of glittering velvet.

_Is this who you wanted to be?_

Negan looks at Carl, this poor fucking kid, more strength, more guts, more potential in him than in himself, or Rick, or any other fucking bastard.

_Is this who you wanted to be?_

Negan sees a chance with this kid to be someone else. He could redeem himself, even if just to this one fucking kid. He knows Carl sees a monster in him. Negan doesn’t like that it matters to him. But he could save him, he could undo all the fuck-up hardwired into this little self-sacrificing dumbass’s head, (Rick’s doing). He pretends that it isn’t about Carl, that it’s about himself, but he knows. He isn’t going to kill this kid, he decides. He isn’t going to kill this kid because he needs him. _It’s your lucky day, junior._

Of course, he still has to do due diligence. Negan doesn’t let anyone off the hook easy. The silence stretches on as Negan drives, out past any of the other colonies. Away from the mayhem. A war is going on tonight within the same state line but they’re a world away when Negan slows to a roll and drives them out into the center of a field. The headlights die when he cuts the engine. The moon shines down like a spotlight and Negan hops out, crunching through the grass around to Carl’s side. He opens his door. Carl looks paler, under the moon and stars. Like a ghost, with holes for eyes.

“Need a hand?” Negan offers his hand out to Carl. To his surprise, the kid grabs it and leans on Negan to help himself down.

He doesn’t ask why they’re here. Carl seems utterly resigned to his assumed fate as Negan walks him away from the truck into the middle of the field. “Take your hat off and kneel on the ground,” Negan says when they stop.

Carl falls to his knees.

“The _hat_ ,” Negan says. He insists. He hates that fucking hat. It stands for every asinine idea Rick has instilled in this poor fucking kid’s head. Every way Rick wasted away his potential. When Carl reaches up to remove the hat, his hands shake.

“Happy?” Carl says.

Crickets sing, louder out here. No one but Heaven almighty can see them now.

“No,” Negan says. The theatrics have drained from his voice. He allows himself to sound human. It’s foreign. Terrifying. He presses a gun to Carl’s forehead. The click of the safety turning off is louder without any noise around them. “Kid. Why did you tell me to kill you?”

It’s a test. There isn’t a wrong answer. Negan isn’t going to kill Carl. This is a show. So, he supposes, he still isn’t entirely a human. He isn’t sure if he’s capable of that anymore. Is this who you wanted to be? Negan doesn’t know who he wants to be, but his whole personality is a fabrication projected onto an empty shell, so he supposes he has free reign over it. Someone who is a person, someone wholly themself, they couldn’t just pick to be someone else.

“Because someone has to die,” Carl says. His face glows in the dark. “So it should be me.”

That frustrates Negan, and he jolts the gun. “Why? _Why_? Where do you get off on this fucking martyr complex? Why you, that’s what I want to know. Why the hell should it be you? Fucking hell, kid, of all the rats in that piece of shit town, working for your piece of shit father-- why _you_?”

That’s the closest he’ll go to waxing poetic about Carl’s bravery, his strength, his uncanny ability to touch some part of Negan that he thought had died a long, long time ago. He’s feeling and it agitates him. His skin thrums with nervous energy, and his voice sounds unhinged to his ear.

Carl tilts his head up slowly so the gun slides to rest neatly between his eye, and the empty hole where the other should be. He smiles. A chill runs down Negan’s spine and he clenches his jaw, eyes wide.

“What?” He demands. “What the hell is it? What’re you smiling about?” He feels desperate to understand, and he isn’t used to not getting what he wants.

Carl lifts his shirt.

Negan’s blood runs cold and he eases the gun away from Carl’s face, hanging limp by his side. “You’re fucking bit,” he says, at first disbelieving.

“Fucking bit,” Carl echoes, and now it makes sense why the kid has the complexion of a ghost.

It all dies. All of his plans, half-formed and hopeful, jumping like live wires, the tickle of emotion in his gut, Is this who you wanted to be? It all fucking dies. Negan wants Carl. And Negan, for once, cannot have what he wants. No amount of violence, or terror, or begging could undo what’s done. He sees red.

“You little shit,” he says. His voice is hollow. “You little lying shit.”

“I didn’t lie,” Carl says. He doesn’t seem satisfied, which pisses Negan off more than anything. Carl pulled one over on him real good, intentional or not, took Negan for a fucking ride, and he doesn’t even look pleased. Negan grabs him by the throat.

“You self righteous little _shit_ ,” he spits, falling to his knees. He throttles Carl, pushes him onto his back in the grass. Carl doesn’t fight. He gasps a little, but he doesn’t look away. It’s like fucking judgement day, those eyes boring into him, seeing through him like glass, seeing through his anger. Like Negan is made of fucking glass. “Are you happy? Are you fucking happy?”

“No,” Carl breathes. His eyes are sad, as if. As if he feels sorry for Negan.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare pity _me_ ,” Negan laughs, releasing Carl abruptly, so his head smacks against the ground. He feels robbed. This is backwards and infuriating, Negan is-- infuriated-- there aren’t even words. Like an aborted orgasm, or a candle snuffed out just too soon, the satisfaction he’d been chasing gone out from under him. Negan was going to do something good. He was going to be someone he should be. He didn’t know who he fucking wanted to be, but he was going to fucking try, because of Carl. He says, “The joke’s on you. I was going to let you live.”

Carl tilts his head. “What?”

The humor saps away from Negan’s voice. “I was going to fucking let you live.”

Understanding dawns on Carl. He touches his wound through his shirt, the bite mark under soiled gauze, and stares at his own hands. “Why?”

Negan resents him for asking. “You know why.” It’s as much of an answer as he’s willing to give, as much of a glance into his humanity as he’s willing to give. He thinks, in self consolation, the kid’s fucking dying. Who does he have to tell.

A few moments of silence passes, beside the crickets singing in the distance. No walkers here. Can’t even hear the sound of gunfire. Carl says, “I’m gonna die.”

“No shit, kid.” Negan rakes a hand through his hair and then sits beside him. They look at the sky instead of at each other. They’ve reached the point at which Negan would’ve given him a good scare and then packed him into the car to take back to the compound. He would’ve been Negan’s fucking magnum opus. He would’ve grown up to be a real fuckin’ leader. “How did you manage to get bit? Now, after all these years?”

“I was helping someone.”

Negan smiles mirthlessly. “That was your first mistake, huh? _Hell_ , kid.”

“You should make it mean something.”

Negan chuckles, dry. “Careful what you wish for,” he says. “I think your idea of a happily ever after is pretty damn different than mine.”

Carl coughs. He lays back in the grass and sets his hat on his chest. He crosses his arms behind his head and stares straight up. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think we all want the same thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“To live.”

And if that ain’t a damn tragedy.

“Does your dad know?” Negan asks.

Carl shakes his head. “No one does.”

A beat. Negan becomes suddenly intensely aware of the weight of the pistol in his hand. Sweat slicks the grip, and he can almost taste the salt and metal.

“Do you want to do it, or do you want me to?” he asks. He looks to Carl for a reaction, but the kid doesn’t move. He looks at peace, chin tilted toward the moon, arms behind his head like he’s sunbathing.

“They say it’s better if it’s someone who cares about you,” he says. He reaches out for the gun, “So I’ll do it myself. While I still can.”

It feels like a gut punch. Negan can’t argue. He doesn’t emote. It’s pretty funny, the series of events tonight. So far off course, like a train jumped the tracks. Negan had been in complete control, but now he feels powerless. Guilt is a spider in his throat. He stands up, dusting off his pants, looking down at Carl. Who, sprawled out in the grass, looks too fucking young. Negan casts a shadow across him, blocking the white light of the moon. How appropriate.

Carl cocks the pistol. Drags his hat back onto his head. It sits askew. Negan grits his teeth. This isn’t right.

“You know what to do,” Negan finds himself saying. The words taste like acid in his mouth. Carl stares up at Negan and Negan’s face is steely, unreadable. It doesn’t mean anything, he feels like glass. Vulnerable. Carl presses the barrel to his temple and for the first time, Negan sees a twitch of something, fear, maybe, pass across his youthful features.

“So do you,” Carl says.

Negan doesn’t have time to ask what that means.

The shot rings in the empty field, and the silence that follows is louder than anything he’s ever heard. Even the crickets stop singing, for a moment.

 _Is this who you wanted to be?_ He hears Carl’s voice, a whisper just out of reach, taunting him, is this who you wanted to be? Is this who you wanted to be? The bleeding hole in the side of Carl’s head looks black and shining. His features lax with death, eyes open as if still looking lazily up at the moon. Negan puts the hat over his face because he can’t deal with dead children.

A dead child.

_This isn’t who I wanted to be._

**Author's Note:**

> written just in time to cheer us all up for 8.10 airing tonight am i right (cue upside-down sarcastic smiley emoji). I'm suffering!!! please rant to me in the comments i am so alone i hate this godforsaken show


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